Monday - Friday, 6-9 a.m.

Host Tom Temin brings you the latest news affecting the federal community each weekday morning, featuring interviews with top government executives and contractors. Listen live from 6 to 9 a.m. or download archived interviews below.

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on Federal News Radio each day. It is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com readers more information about the stories heard on the radio. In today's news, House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on a $585 billion defense policy bill for 2015, official word on the nomination of Ashton Carter for Defense Secretary is expected this week and a multi-billion-dollar defense bill proposed by Congress includes more steps to combat military sexual assaults.

We'll soon find out which agencies made the 2014 Best Places To Work in the Federal Government list. The Partnership for Public Service is scheduled to release the annual survey next Tuesday (Dec. 9). As anticipation builds, John Palguta, vice president for public policy at the Partnership joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive with some action items for agency managers in advance of the release.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid wants to change how it delivers and measures Medicaid. It launched the Medicaid Accelerator Program back in July. The goal is to get Medicaid services and payments to its beneficiaries faster than ever before. It's crowdsourcing best practices for payment and services delivery from states and other health providers. Jason McNamara is one of the leaders behind IAP and a senior technical advisor for CMS in the Health and Human Services Department. He spoke with Emily Kopp and Tom Temin on the Federal Drive about how CMS wants to pass its improvements onto the states.

A simple question is being answered in sundry ways this morning. How can
information technology assist in the mission to deliver the most effective
health care? Innovators and practitioners assembled this morning for AFCEA
Bethesda's annual Health IT day at the Bethesda North Marriott and Conference
Center. Leslie Steele is the resident of AFCEA's Bethesda Chapter and helped
form the agenda for the seventh annual conference. She spoke with Emily Kopp and
Tom Temin on the Federal Drive about what's changed since the first
iteration.

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on Federal News Radio each day. It is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com readers more information about the stories heard on the radio. In today's news, DHS secretary Jeh Johnson says he doens't want to be the next DoD secretary, the federal prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba will remain open for at least another year and all funds in the Thrift Savings Plan return in the black for November.

Doing business with the federal government can be lucrative, but no one ever said it was easy. Contractors have always had hoops within hoops to jump through to get — and then maintain — their federal business. Now a few new challenges are popping up. Michael Tinsley is the CEO of NeoSystems Corporation. He joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to talk about a few near-term issues for government contractors.

Returning from war can be difficult for service members. Those who leave with physical and mental wounds often face long recovery times. The Warrior Canine Connection is trying to make that process a bit easier. Reporter Darci Marchese, from Federal News Radio's sister station WTOP, reports on the extraordinary journey that's helping to turn dogs into healers.

When architects and engineers design buildings, they have to meet local building
codes. But, simply meeting those codes won't ensure you have the most efficient
design for the long haul. Joshua Kneifel is a research economist in the
engineering laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. On the Federal Drive with Tom Temin, he told Federal News Radio's Lauren Larson about a new tool NIST engineers
developed that lets builders measure the economic and environmental impacts of
everything from the floor to the roof.

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on Federal News Radio each day. It is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com readers more information about the stories heard on the radio. In today's news, Congress returns to work today, Researchers say a new vaccine against Ebole appears safe after tests on 20 healthy people and Syrian activists say Islamic State militants were pounded by as many as 30 airstrikes Sunday by U.S. led coalition warplanes on Sunday.

The U.S. Postal Service is never more in demand than now, the year-end holiday season. But Postal employees face more than a heavy workload. Year-round, they're dealing with the threat of assaults as they make their rounds, sometimes in the dark. Then there's this: Postal Service employees who have faced sexually assault by their coworkers. In a new report by the NBC News-4 Investigative Team, two Postal workers told investigative reporter Tisha Thompson what they said happened to them and the retaliation they faced after speaking out. She joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to discuss her investigation.

Agencies spend more and more each year on professional services. Now the General Services Administration is hatching a plan to round up all of the professional services contractors and herd them into one big multiple award schedule. It'll be called the Professional Services Schedule. Miguel Garrido, a quantitative analyst with Bloomberg Government, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to explain the impetus for the move, how it will work, and who the new schedule will benefit.

Selling to the federal government is a unique occupation. In no other industry do marketing and sales people face the dauting set of laws and regulations they face here. Yet, personal relationships matter in government contracting just like they do in the commercial world. Contracting veteran Tim Sullivan has authored the blog, 10 Myths of Government Contracting. On the Federal Drive with Tom Temin, Sullivan tackled myth number 6: We contractors don't have to market to agencies like we do in the commercial sector.

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on Federal News Radio each day. It is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com readers more information about the stories heard on the radio. In today's news, a leading candidate to succeed Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary has reportedly taken herself out of the running, Congressional Republicans are considering a hybrid approach to avoiding a government shutdown and a new bill would allow the Veterans Affairs Department to recommend medical marijuana for some patients.

The Veterans Affairs Department is on the street with a new procurement to replace its patient scheduling system. The department has used the current system since 1986. It's the one scheduling staff used to manipulate data on patient waiting times in Phoenix and several other locations across the country. Federal News Radio's Jared Serbu writes about this RFP and more in this week's edition of Inside the Reporter's Notebook.

The resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is bringing the administration's military and foreign
policies into a new light. The next secretary will have to deal with the lingering issues of pay and benefits reform, sequestration, and the new
technology offset strategy. Jim Thomas, vice president and director of studies
at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, analyzed what Hagel's
resignation means for the agency's present and future on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

An amendment to the Freedom of Information Act appeared to sail through the Senate. The goal is to hold agencies more accountable for disclosing records and create a more uniform system for the public to file FOIA requests. The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill unanimously. Sean Vitka, federal policy manager at the Sunlight Foundation, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive with analysis of what the bill would do.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services operate websites meant to help Medicare patients navigate the tangled world of health care providers. But the sites often fail at basic tasks. Auditors from the Government Accountability Office found some don't provide enough information to compare prices, while others don't give adequate information about quality of care. Linda Kohn is director of Healthcare Issues at the GAO. She joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to share more of what GAO found.

When things go boom, often the Homeland Security Department wants to know what it was. To do that it requires sophisticated explosives detection equipment. In fact, the idea is to detect the presence of explosives before they can be detonated. The DHS Science and Technology Directorate has just broken ground on a new lab for evaluating explosives detection equipment. Brian Krenzien, acting executive director of the Transportation Security Lab, joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive with more.

New supercomputing technology under development at the Energy Department carries a price tag of $425 million. An explosion in data and in computing power requirements are among the challenges. Secretary Ernest Moniz says the two projects, Coral and FastForward 2, will foster what he calls "transformational advancements in basic science, national defense, environmental and energy research." Barbara Helland is facilities division director for Advanced Scientific Computing Research program at Energy. She just returned from a Supercomputing Conference in New Orleans and joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive.

The Federal Headlines is a daily compilation of the stories you hear discussed on Federal News Radio each day. It is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com readers more information about the stories heard on the radio. In today's news, the Veterans Affairs Department has fired the head of its Phoenix Health Care System, former Defense undersecretary Michele Flournoy is a top contender to replace outgoing Secretary Chuck Hagel and the U.S. and Turkey come to an agreement over opposition fighters in Syria.